This post is more a reflection on the essential issues we face in the areas of primary education.
For those who want an overview of the current model in India, you have to start with 3 major bits of the process
1. Primary Education is a State issue and responsibility and not a central (federal) issue / responsibility
2. Primary Education has a state allocation of budget - mostly in the form of wholly "owned" / run government schools and partially aided other schools (aid is mostly in areas like mid-day meal, examination process etc). However, this is only for the state run syllabus schools ?
3. Outside of the state syllabus - India has 2 main (not counting the elite education models of IBC) syllabus models : The ICSE and the CBSE
The question I have for myself is...
Can we ensure that the state model (for example SSLC in Karnataka) has common bits that is borrowed as mandatory in the structure.
Things that I'd like to see
- Focus on India as a country and culture with the state covering **ONLY** the local bits
- Inclusion of topics like "Civic Sense" instead or as part of Civics
- History that covers local regions while dis-passionately describing the caste issues ?
- Science that includes environmental science related to conservation (Energy, water, power etc)
I'm afraid that unless we establish a common national "minimum" structure for coverage, we'll continue to talk about the north-south divide etc.
The basic process should be to bring in more PRIDE into the system both as a nation and then as a local community ?
Maybe the pride will help people improve (and want to improve) their own backyards ?
Ravi,
ReplyDeleteI am associated with a NGO called CMCA(Children's Movement for Civic Awareness), they have tied up with several schools. The volunteers of CMCA visit schools twice a month and talk to children about civic sense..
The schools children actively take part in this.
They are not able to concentrate on rural areas as most of the volunteers don't know how to read and write kannada...though they are trying to get more and more volunteers...
The Ina Club has planned to get one of the kids to visit Inatech and talk about civic sense to all the techies as I beleive that children are powerful messengers of change.
Yes - I saw the CMCA note.
ReplyDeleteSounds very good.
Actually, there is a bit of a debate going on if this is something that has to be addressed at "grassroot" level or should it be addressed at a "structural" level.
The grassroot approach is very tangible and immediate, however, it has a scaling issue.
Another approach would be to take that more into a "movement" - As an example, why can't it be woven into either Scouts, NCC or Sevadal model ?
Can you check this out as a thought please ?